9/21/2014

Thoughts On A Sunday

The last weekend of astronomical summer is here all too soon, with fall coming tomorrow evening.

I wish I could say the weather was still summer-like, but Saturday wasn't summerish though today was, with temps well into the upper 70's, humid, but cloudy for most of the day. I'm not complaining.

The only color we're seeing on the leaves are on the swamp maples and some of the sumac, so not much has changed since last weekend.

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As bad as the campaign TV ads were during New Hampshire's primary campaigns, they are far worse now that the candidates have been selected. It seems to me that there are 10 negative/attack ads for every positive ad and they have already gotten old. Boht parties are guilty of this, but I think the Democrats are running a lot more negative ads, particularly for the US Senate race, with Harry Reid's Senate Majority PAC running such ads against Scott Brown at what seems to be every commercial break. What I find to be disturbing is that many of the 'references' seen running in fine print in those ads are either incomplete, making it impossible to look up, or are highly misleading. On more than a few I have found that Brown's Democrat opponent, incumbent Jeanne Shaheen voted the same way on much of the same legislation. So it's perfectly OK for a Democrat to vote for or against some legislation, but it's bad if a Republican voted the same way.

The Democrat double standard lives on.

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If he truly sees our rights as nothing but privileges, then I doubt he would have any qualms about taking actions that will strip us of those privileges if it suits his needs. Given the proper conditions, I have no doubt he would try to do just that.

How this putz got elected eludes me. That this putz got elected twice is shameful and shows just how shallow and uninformed the electorate has become.

Now it looks like the anti-casino forces are being proven right as a number of casinos across the nation have been closing after losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Four casinos in Atlantic City alone have closed their doors because revenues haven't been there to sustain them. Some of that comes from more competition as other states have opened casinos of their own. (Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut drained away a good portion of Atlantic City's gamblers.)

New Hampshire has two neighboring states that have authorized casino gambling, Maine and Massachusetts. Maine already has their casino up and running. Massachusetts has yet to build their first. (They've authorized three.) Somehow I think neither the Oxford Casino in Maine of the still unbuilt casinos in Massachusetts will do as well as they think. Adding yet another casino in New Hampshire will merely saturate the market, driving revenues down. However the downsides of those casinos will still be felt, something we don't want or need here in the Granite State.

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That sounds more like wishful thinking from Marilyn Frye, author of A Lesbian's Perspective on Women's Studies. And here it is we've been told for a couple of generations now that homosexuality isn't a choice, that they're born that way. Talk about turning the narrative upside down! So it's only women who are all homosexual but are 'coerced ' into heterosexuality? Really? If that were the case I would expect the percentage of openly lesbian women to be closer to 20 or 30%, not the couple of percent we see today.

Moonbattery at its finest!

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...it's a lousy recovery, and one that most people find unconvincing as hell. Whatever else the sort-of recovery, not really recession may be, it's strong evidence of self-inflicted economic wounds. America may be limping along, but we did it to ourselves.

The White House and its allies tried to make hay over the summer with terrible tales of “corporate deserters” who are, as the president put it, "fleeing the country to get out of paying taxes."

But those formerly American companies setting up shop in Ireland, Canada and elsewhere weren't jumping—they were pushed.

Punish businesses and corporations enough and they'll get the message they aren't welcome. Is it any wonder many of them have decided that if they aren't wanted that they'll pull up stakes and move someplace they are? Yet when they do, they're further vilified because they left or moved some of their operations overseas where they're welcomed with open arms.

It's a no-win situation for those corporations, particularly with a hostile administration in the White House, government agencies and bureaucracies carrying out the dictates of the administration, and one chamber of Congress willingly doing the bidding of an anti-capitalist president. Do these folks believe that somehow these corporations are obligated to remain someplace that treats them as if they are nothing more than vassals and ATMs for the government?

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Surveying 850 people who either work in government or directly with it, researchers found that the inside-the-Beltway crowd has very little in common with America at large. Washington insiders are more likely to be white. They are more educated. Their salaries are higher, they vote more and have more faith in the fairness of elections. They are probably Democrat and liberal. They more diligently follow the news. And they think the mechanizations of government couldn’t be easier to comprehend.

Gee, could that be why the decisions they make and the policies they put forth tend to cause more harm than good? When their understanding of “the people” doesn't extend outside the capitol, then they're going to make a lot of poor decisions, many that will piss off most of the rest of the nation. Just because something is true in Washington DC does not automatically make it true in the rest of the nation.

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It doesn't help that our educational system has dumbed down the curriculum so much that a little over a third of Americans can't name the three branches of government, and a third can't name a single branch. They also have poor understanding of Congress power to override a presidential veto or that a Supreme Court decision cannot be “sent back to Congress for further discussion and reconsideration.”

How the hell can voters make informed decisions if they don't even understand how our government is supposed to work?

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Fortunately I am one of the 33 percent who has no such fear because I don't have a smartphone. I have a cell phone that lets me make phone calls and text. That's it. At times it seems more like a ball and chain rather than a tool which is why every now and then I shut it off. If we still had a landline I would likely only turn it on only when I left home. As it is my only phone and I have elderly parents and in-laws, shutting the phone off for extended periods of time is a non-starter.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer weather has returned, the air-conditioner units have been removed from the windows, and the number of summerfolk has finally dwindled away.